


Lost to Ghosts

by Bbaegi



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, they stupid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:28:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24409588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bbaegi/pseuds/Bbaegi
Summary: "Oh," Baekhyun breathed out, tiny, weak, barely existant now that he’d used up all the strength he had against him. Kyungsoo felt the frailty of his voice shredding his heart into pieces. "I lost you one more time."
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Do Kyungsoo | D.O
Comments: 10
Kudos: 59





	Lost to Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> lmao I can't believe I just wrote this it's too good to be true lmaooo I legit haven't properly written anything in almost a whole year so I'm a bit rusty and I hope this is great!!!  
> I wrote this bc of ghost and ghost only! I listened to the song on repeat since the album was released and this just flashed in my mind omg her impact her power stream soty ghost

Kyungsoo pushed the trunk of his car closed with one hand and felt the loudness of its echo reverberate somewhere inside his body.

Noises were always louder than usual in the enclosed space of an underground parking lot. Noises always pulsed inside of him louder than usual when his gaze caught sight of neat hair, ears stuck out by endearment, and twin glows doted on the smooth skin of pretty cheekbones.

Cheekbones weren’t supposed to be pretty. It was just bones. Bones hidden by skin, a part of the face that was barely even noticeable when looking at someone. Cheekbones were never the first thing Kyungsoo noticed on people’s face. Kyungsoo barely even noticed most people’s face.

But there was not a single part of Baekhyun’s face he didn’t notice whenever he had the chance of looking at it. He could notice every single part of it, up to the mole on his cheek that hadn’t been there until two months ago, even when that face was nothing but a ghostly thought in the depth of his own mind. It was there. Baekhyun had started owning Kyungsoo’s mind at some point and while Kyungsoo didn’t know when that had happened, he knew that Baekhyun probably didn’t even know that it had happened.

He stood there, hand still pressed to the cold, black surface of his car trunk as every bit of his ability to move had precipitated right into one single part of his body, gathering all he had into his eyes. To make sure they wouldn’t miss a single movement of Baekhyun’s as he walked to the back of his car, opened the backseat door, and dumped his bag inside. He always threw it on the seat so carelessly.

It often ended up toppling down to the floor as he drove. Kyungsoo had noticed that once, three months ago, when he’d been on the passenger’s seat of Baekhyun’s car and Baekhyun had caught him staring at the way his hand rested on his thigh as he used only his other hand to stir the wheel. It was right at that moment that the bag had toppled over to the floor, when Baekhyun had huffed a knowing laugh and caught Kyungsoo’s gaze.

Kyungsoo had wondered back then, if Baekhyun had snatched his heart without him noticing and tucked it into his bag. That had been the only explanation as to why he could feel his heart copying the movement, the sensation of falling cutting right through him.

He often felt like, whenever he was with Baekhyun, his entire being somehow spread all over the surroundings, yearning to be noticed by Baekhyun. Feeling inside his own body every single thing that happened around them, the noises, the thumps, the toppling over, was only a small sacrifice he had to make in order to gain a higher chance of Baekhyun seeing him properly. Yet, Baekhyun never noticed Kyungsoo, even if Kyungsoo’s heart expanded to cover all four walls of the room they were both in. He didn’t like that sensation Baekhyun gave him. That expansion. It felt uncomfortable in his stomach.

Baekhyun closed his car door, stepped to the driver’s side, pulled the door open, raised his head, and instantly noticed Kyungsoo. He closed the door, the sound howled in the parking lot and Kyungsoo felt it dive right into his chest and bite into his heart. The sensation lasted all throughout the spread of Baekhyun’s lips into a smile.

Kyungsoo felt like he saw it in slow-motion, the way the corners of Baekhyun’s lips climbed up to his cheeks and puffed them up, the glow of his skin diffusing all over his face. It should be ridiculous. A smile in slow motion should be ridiculous, laughable, ugly. It wasn’t. It had never been, not for one second. Sometimes, Kyungsoo wished it was.

"Hey," Baekhyun said from afar, walking towards Kyungsoo. He looked nice. Kyungsoo had seen him the whole day but at the end of the day, he still looked as beautiful as he had at the very beginning of it. "We always meet at the parking lot, don’t we?" he said, gracing his words with a laugh. It made them happy. It made Kyungsoo happy. "Maybe we’ll forever keep running into each other in this parking lot."

Kyungsoo finally stepped away from his car, noticing that his hand was still pressed against it. He pulled away, embarrassment burning the inside of his palm. He must’ve looked so dumb all this time. Baekhyun always transformed him into the dumbest version of himself with a single glance. At the beginning, when Baekhyun had first started working in the agency, Kyungsoo had hated that power. Now, whenever he thought back on it in the solitude of his late nights, it kind of made him laugh. Kyungsoo had never once felt stupid in his life. Baekhyun had so easily put an end to that.

He hated it.

"Well, that’s only natural for two people who work in the same place," Kyungsoo replied, the weight of his own words tilting his head a bit as he said them. "Where else would we run into each other?"

It tilted Baekhyun’s smile a bit too. One side of it flopped a little.

"Right," Baekhyun said, the delight gone from his voice so suddenly that it left it a soft, weak shadow of itself. Kyungsoo swallowed. That was Baekhyun’s disappointed voice.

But Kyungsoo already believed that them always running into each other at the parking lot was fate. One side believing that was enough, he didn’t need Baekhyun to think it as well. Especially not as some kind of cheesy joke. It would be too much. Too real. Too scary.

Kyungsoo had never been an easily scared person. Baekhyun had easily turned him into a coward.

He should say something. He should really say something. He was the one to shoot Baekhyun’s conversation down. He should start it. Baekhyun’s smile grew again, easily. It burned Kyungsoo’s eyes, flared up in his stomach so he moved his gaze up to Baekhyun’s forehead, only partly concealed by the comma he had styled his hair into.

He did it so easily. Kyungsoo had watched him one morning, as he’d tried washing the wine stain from his shirt in Baekhyun’s bathroom. Baekhyun had had spilled it on him the night before, in the midst of a tipsy, unstoppable fit of laughter. Kyungsoo had ended up borrowing one of his shirts. Losing his favorite shirt forever had been worth it, he’d had the occasion to watch Baekhyun grumble about having to have a neat appearance at work while building that neat appearance seamlessly. At home, Baekhyun always had messy, floppy, soft hair and baggy, comfortable clothes. He was nothing like the appearance he built whenever he had to go outside.

Kyungsoo appreciated both versions of Baekhyun equally. He had no preference. His only preference in the world was Baekhyun.

He still had that shirt at home. He’d kept it, just in case he’d need an excuse to talk to Baekhyun someday. Baekhyun had never asked it back. Because they never talked about it. About them spending the night over in each other’s sheets. They lived it and then, outside of each other’s houses, it was as if they’d both forgotten it ever happened.

"So, how did it go with the clients today?"

Kyungsoo snapped out of it and looked back down into Baekhyun’s eyes when he heard his voice. He regretfully looked away from his hair. He should’ve ran his fingers through it more two nights ago, when Baekhyun had been lying on his lap and complaining about their manager to him. That was the last time they had talked. Baekhyun hadn’t talked to him at all at the office since then.

They hadn’t fought, that was just the regrettable way they worked. Kyungsoo didn’t even know why.

"I didn’t see you much today, I hardly had time to get out of my office," Baekhyun added when Kyungsoo was too busy swallowing down the bitterness spreading through him to give him an answer.

Kyungsoo knew. He also knew that Baekhyun just hadn’t tried seeing him. Kyungsoo had caught glimpses of Baekhyun throughout the whole day, whenever he walked by his office and looked at the glass partitions, his eyes seeking him. Baekhyun could’ve seen him a lot if he’d really looked at him.

"Yeah," he sighed, adding laughter into it. It sounded shaky. Baekhyun was staring into his eyes, not looking away, not looking over Kyungsoo’s shoulder, at Kyungsoo’s chin, at his eyebrows, at his hair, anywhere else like most people would do during a conversation. "This one man came and asked if we could offer insurance for his closet."

"For his closet?" Baekhyun repeated, tilting his head, sliding the phone he’d been holding into the back pocket of his jeans.

Kyungsoo blinked, flashed back to that one time Baekhyun had been upset at him for paying too much attention to his phone, that one time they’d been lounging on the terrace of Kyungsoo’s apartment. He’d stolen the phone right out of his hands, then given it back when Kyungsoo stared at him seriously enough. They’d argued that night. Baekhyun had accused Kyungsoo of not really being with him. Kyungsoo had felt wronged. He knew he always was with Baekhyun. He was with Baekhyun much more than Baekhyun was with him.

Baekhyun had lost him that one time, when he’d spilled a bunch of things he didn’t even mean and then just abruptly left.

They’d made up the next morning when Baekhyun had rung his door, still in his pyjamas, holding a bag full of pastries. The sweetness of it tasted the best on Baekhyun’s lips, when Kyungsoo had kissed him. That was the day Kyungsoo had found out he liked Baekhyun even more than the favorite cupcake from his childhood.

He blinked again and threw himself back to the conversation they were having. He shouldn’t think about that. He shouldn’t think about things they never talked about.

Kyungsoo cleared his throat. He should look away from Baekhyun’s gaze. His eyes had that glint to them, the glint that told Kyungsoo he knew that it was difficult for him to look away. Kyungsoo should look away. He didn’t. Instead, he took a step closer to Baekhyun. Baekhyun turned him into the dumbest version of himself, a version that refused to put distance between himself and the danger despite getting caught by the fire over and over again.

"Yeah, apparently he’s a famous person on the internet or something."

"You mean, an influencer?" Baekhyun asked, furrowed his eyebrows a little. Kyungsoo’s gaze followed the movement. Baekhyun looked the best when his eyebrows were furrowed, his forehead glistening with sweat, and his mouth gasping for the breath Kyungsoo stole from him with his hands alone. One of his most liked revenges upon Baekhyun.

Kyungsoo finally looked away and down at his shirt, feigning a need to straighten the fabric. He didn’t want to talk about whatever funny clients came to their insurance company. He wanted to talk about why they kept circling around each other, colliding, and then acting like none of it ever happened. But they never talked about that.

"I don’t know what that is, but sure," he said, sighing and looking back up at Baekhyun. He could never win against his need to just see Baekhyun, no matter how much he saw Baekhyun on a daily basis. It was never enough.

Baekhyun made a face at him. That face. The one that felt like he had won something. The one where his eyes narrowed just a little and the perky pink of his lips was tinted with the shadow of slyness. The one smile that felt like he could hurt Kyungsoo, maybe wanted to hurt Kyungsoo.

"You don’t know what an influencer is?" he asked, loudening his voice, broadening it with an exaggerated kind of astonishment.

Kyungsoo twisted his lips. He knew the exact words that had stung Baekhyun. His answer to his allusion of their meeting in the parking lot so often being fate. He’d given him that answer on purpose. He didn’t know who had started pinching the other first but they always did that. Hurt each other the tiniest bit, like there was something unsaid that had upset the other and they were only taking sly revenge.

That was what Kyungsoo wanted to talk about. But he had no such courage in him. Only layers and layers of exhaustion he was used to that he merely shrugged.

"I don’t," Kyungsoo admitted, voice flattened by irritation.

Baekhyun’s smile widened. Kyungsoo hated this. He didn’t know why they kept kissing, kept watching movies together, kept never finishing those movies, kept hooking up, kept hurting each other, kept refusing to talk about it.

It had been six months since the first time Kyungsoo had kissed Baekhyun, when they’d both stayed up way after work hours in the office to prepare a meeting the next day, right inside of Baekhyun’s office. Baekhyun had smiled at him after the kiss. Kyungsoo had smiled back and left soon after. They hadn’t talked about it right then, nor the next day. It hadn’t mattered back then. Now it did.

"It’s someone who has a lot of followers on social media, usually they’re either famous on youtube or Instagram," Baekhyun started explaining, voice nonchalant but gaze scorching Kyungsoo again as he spilled his knowledge to him."They put out good content that people like, somehow get more and more popular, and then make a lot of money thanks to brand deals and events or whatever."

Kyungsoo hated the way he gave him a full definition of a word and then ended it with a _whatever,_ hated the way it clenched warmth into his stomach. That was nothing. That wasn’t supposed to be hot.

He breathed out through his nose for a long moment. "Of course," he said, and then hummed. Baekhyun’s eyes toppled down to his lips. It only further irritated Kyungsoo. Baekhyun was always looking at his lips, always making it hard for Kyungsoo to settle on continuing to use them for anything other than kissing him even during important meetings. Always made it difficult for Kyungsoo. "Of course you’d know a lot of about such childish things," he said, not even bothering to add a lighthearted tone into his voice. He was too tired for that.

A car passed by a few meters behind Baekhyun, the tires squeaking a cringe all around them. Kyungsoo felt the unpleasant sensation of it in his teeth, clenched them, watched Baekhyun press his lips together, amusement remaining on his face. Kyungsoo knew him well enough to tell it was merely the vestige of the real smile Kyungsoo’s words had crumbled into ruins. He found even the falsity of it hypnotizing. He didn’t like this.

"Oh, so now my interests are childish?" Baekhyun asked, raising his eyebrows, smile honed and held right against Kyungsoo’s throat threateningly. "Again?" That was the first puncture.

Kyungsoo had called Baekhyun’s big interest for social media and _influencers_ childish once, months ago. Baekhyun had hated it, had felt genuinely hurt that Kyungsoo would make fun of his interests like that. Kyungsoo had understood, had merely done it because Baekhyun had been talking too much about a certain woman on social media and how pretty and talented and funny and dreamy she was. That was when Kyungsoo had realized for the first time that he only wanted Baekhyun to use these words to talk about him and no one else.

They’d argued about it. They argued a lot for people who were only supposed to take pleasure out of each other.

"Well, your hobbies haven’t changed, have they?" Kyungsoo replied, raising his eyebrows too just to let Baekhyun know he wasn’t the only one ruffled up.  
  
This was the moment. This was the moment Kyungsoo should step closer to him, take him in his arms, kiss him, say something to let Baekhyun know he only did it on purpose because he loved an irritated Baekhyun, found him too irresistible.

But this was different. Somehow, this was different. Kyungsoo didn’t try and hurt him just because this was a joke and they always made fun of each other as a joke. He didn’t know why they were doing this, why they were fighting right now. Kyungsoo was just over this. He wanted more. He wanted much more than irritation and a joke and pleasure out of Baekhyun. But Baekhyun never allowed him.

Baekhyun never called, never texted, always ended up turning into a ghost, cutting out their text conversations halfway through, just stopped replying. Baekhyun didn’t _want_ , not as much as Kyungsoo did. Not at all.

Maybe Kyungsoo was tired of this situation. Maybe Kyungsoo was angry that Baekhyun didn’t do anything to change the situation. Maybe he was angry at himself, for the same exact reason.

And he couldn’t step closer. He couldn’t move. Something was standing between them, something thick and impenetrable and glazing, a tension that had never been there before. That was weird, there was always a lot of tension between them. That was one of Baekhyun’s favorite thing about what they had. But this was worse. This was hideous words they left unsaid, the words they lost to the ghosts standing between them.

"No," Baekhyun said, shaking his head slowly, left, right, gaze locked in on Kyungsoo. " _I_ stay true to myself. I don’t change, I don’t adapt." His hand gestured slowly in front of him, his eyebrows furrowing. He closed his hand into a delicate fist when he found the right word. "I don’t morph."

Kyungsoo didn’t say anything for a second, only clenched his jaw hard, looked at the dark blue car stationed on his left, looked back at Baekhyun. The fluorescent lights of the parking lot magnified his entire being, made his hair shine even more than usual, made his anger even more blazing than usual.

"What are you trying to say?" he answered eventually, even though he knew exactly what Baekhyun was trying to say. What he was trying to do.

This was the part Kyungsoo hated the most. When Baekhyun hurt him back. He’d started it. He hadn’t. He didn’t even know who had started all of this, this thing between them. It had never started, it had just happened. Like it was meant to.

And Kyungsoo kept swinging both sides, kept wishing Baekhyun thought the same way, kept shutting him off when he alluded to thinking the same way.

Kept feeling afraid of taking this somewhere else, making it into something more. More than a ghost between them, one no one else but them saw.

Kyungsoo was angry because he wanted more. He was angry because he didn’t know if Baekhyun truly wanted more or if this was a joke. He was angry because he was scared of taking this further, scared of making it into something much, much complicated than what they already had.

"You don’t know?" Baekhyun asked and this time, all traces of his smile were abruptly gone. Maybe he was too tired to hold it up, just like Kyungsoo. "Are you that tired? Do I have to spell it out?"

"Sure," Kyungsoo said, through his teeth, words sizzling with ire. Not for Baekhyun, for himself. Because this wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t want to do this. Again. He didn’t want to displease Baekhyun, hurt him. He wanted to make Baekhyun happy. But he didn’t know if Baekhyun wanted him to, didn’t know if he was even able to make Baekhyun happy. It had been such a long time since he’d last wanted to make someone happy and had tried and failed and had his heart trampled and was left to die on the sidewalk. "Why don’t you try and impress me with the knowledge you have?"

Baekhyun laughed, throwing his head back, loud, exaggerated, a show of outrage, a sound that ended abrupt and on the wrong note, wonky.

Kyungsoo wanted to talk about it. About the fact that he knew Baekhyun didn’t laugh as much with anyone else as he did whenever they were together. About how he didn’t want to make anyone but Baekhyun laugh.

Instead, Baekhyun aimed at him with his gaze again, igniting something in Kyungsoo, a corner of his heart. It always started in the corner, then consumed the whole of it. It always happened.

"Kyungsoo," Baekhyun said, destroying a step that stood between them with that word. Even now, Kyungsoo felt like the best version of himself was in the name that Baekhyun pronounced. "Even now, you’re doing it. You’re morphing. Adjusting. To me. Like you always do."

Kyungsoo said nothing. It irritated Baekhyun further, his eyebrow twitched. It wasn’t even anger anymore. Hurt. Kyungsoo knew.

They’d had this conversation before. Much more gently, much more truthfully. Kyungsoo had been the one to use that word, _morph_ , as he’d told Baekhyun that he was tired of adjusting himself to whoever he was with, of turning himself into a version that would go along well with the other person, whether it be in friendship or relationships or even just amidst family. Kyungsoo kept morphing, molding himself into something that the other party would like, just to avoid trouble, just for things to go smoothly and without a headache on his part. He’d wondered if he even had an initial form, or if he was nothing but a mould.

Baekhyun had held his face in the caring gentleness of his hands, had told him that he did have an initial form, a _real Kyungsoo_ in him, and that it was the best version of him that Baekhyun had ever seen. That it was the only version of him that Baekhyun had ever seen, that he was so happy that Kyungsoo showed it to him. That it was beautiful. Then, he’d kissed the patch of skin right between Kyungsoo’s lips and his cheek, sealing himself right into Kyungsoo’s existence at that exact moment.

They’d lost each other that night. They’d lost each other in the bareness of each other, in the warmth of skin, in the honesty weaved into sighs of pleasure, in the bliss they offered each other. They’d lost themselves in each other. They kept losing themselves in each other.

The silence was disrupted by the alarm of a car unlocking somewhere far behind Kyungsoo. He was depleted. Baekhyun wasn’t. He never backed down.

"Why don’t you just be you, Kyungsoo?" he spat out, words tumbling together from the rage. Baekhyun hated anger. He often cried when he was angry, could never help it. "Why are you adjusting yourself again, always? You don’t want to fight right now. You’re tired." Kyungsoo swallowed, crushed a thumb into his palm, squeezed it into his fist. "You’re not stopping me. You’re only going along."

Kyungsoo wanted him to shut up. He didn’t want to hear things he already knew. But Baekhyun’s voice was gaining in pace, growing in heat, getting quieter. Baekhyun never screamed, only muted his voice until it was too sharp, too unbearable.

"I don’t know what you want," Baekhyun said, swinging his hands up a little with the force of his words.

This was childish. This was ridiculous. This fight was born out of nothing and was happening on the parking lot of their work place. Not a lot of people were left in the building, it was late already and most had gone home but still, there were people. They shouldn’t get so riled up by something so trivial. It mattered too much.

Kyungsoo didn’t know why it mattered so much to Baekhyun. He knew why. He knew. He wished. He didn’t know if it was only a wish. He hoped it wasn’t.

"I don’t know what you don’t want," Baekhyun went on, crushing the last bit of distance between them. Kyungsoo felt his stomach twisting. "You’re only going along with whatever is happening. I get upset. We ignore each other. You get upset. We ignore each other. I say something. You ignore it."

He didn’t know when the fight had turned to be about what was between them. He hated it. He hated the way Baekhyun kept blaming him. None of this made sense. The beginning of their conversation had no correlation to what was being said now. Maybe it had only been an excuse for the real matter they needed to deal with.

"Have you thought about the fact that everything you’re blaming me of right now applies to you too?" He struck back, voice louder than Baekhyun’s. Kyungsoo was the contrary of him. Anger grew his voice in depth and volume. "Or are you just gonna blame everything on me and make yourself the suffering victim?"

It always happened. Kyungsoo always lost Baekhyun because of a silly fight. Baekhyun always lost him because of a silly fight. Because they just couldn’t communicate properly. Sometimes it was because of Kyungsoo. Sometimes it was because of Baekhyun. They were both to blame for this, equally as guilty. They kept losing each other and even though they ended up finding each other again at the end of it, always, that wasn’t what Kyungsoo wanted.

"Have you thought about how much you’re shutting me down?" Baekhyun retaliated, voice falling to an exasperated whisper, eyes widening. Kyungsoo didn’t like the despair in them. He sharpened his eyes again into anger. Kyungsoo didn’t like that either. He wanted joy in those eyes. Joy induced by him. "I say we’re similar, you answer that friendships start because of similarities. I stop kissing you, you tell me that you miss kissing me. I actually send you a text first, you stop replying to me and then get upset with me for doing the same exact thing. I allude to the fact that maybe it’s fucking fate that we keep running into each other unplanned in this goddamn parking lot and you tell me something that makes me feel like a delusional idiot."

He raised his hand between them. Kyungsoo’s whole body was rigidified, a plank at Baekhyun’s mercy as he kept punching rusty nails into him without a single second of mercy. With his next words, Baekhyun stabbed a strong, pained finger into Kyungsoo’s chest.

"Why don’t you grow some fucking balls and tell me what you want out of us?"

Kyungsoo’s body didn’t budge even when the sound of an engine turning on roared from the car on their left. The spot Baekhyun’s finger had stabbed was enflamed by pain. He couldn’t feel it, numbed by the anger Baekhyun had discharged over him. Kyungsoo had never seen him so angry. The car drove away, tires squeaking, the sound finally ripping Baekhyun’s gaze away from him.

This was unfair. This was too unfair, so unfair Kyungsoo actually felt his eyes searing from frustration, watering the slightest bit. He was morphing into Baekhyun. He was worn out.

Baekhyun jumped away from him, snatching his finger away from Kyungsoo's chest, the sound made by the car pulled him back together.

This was unfair.

Baekhyun’s jaw tightened. In the silence, Kyungsoo heard him swallow, the sound penetrating the cloud of words still muddying his mind, the endless echo of every single word Baekhyun had just hit him with, all at once. Every single word was overlapping with another yet he heard it all clear as day.

Baekhyun took a step back, let his hands fall down along his body, limp. Kyungsoo watched his eyes widen with the realization of what he’d just said.

This was incredibly unfair and Baekhyun must’ve seen something on his face, something even Kyungsoo was unaware of, for his face weakened into exhaustion, heavy and drained of any other feeling.

Baekhyun a corner of his lower lip, pulling it into his mouth to punish the skin of it. His face darkened into a paled shade of regret. Kyungsoo couldn’t even feel his face anymore, had no idea what it was doing, what it looked like, but the more Baekhyun looked at it, the more he seemed to find it awful.

"Oh," Baekhyun breathed out, tiny, weak, barely existant now that he’d used up all the strength he had against him. Kyungsoo felt the frailty of his voice shredding his heart into pieces. "I lost you one more time."

They kept losing each other. They kept losing each other because—

"Have you," Kyungsoo started, stopping to wince at the break in his own voice. He felt the nail of his thumb digging into his palm, still locked in the tightness of his fist. This was so fucking unfair. "Have you thought about the fact that everything you’re blaming me for right now applies to you too?" Kyungsoo said, the same sentence as minutes ago because it always came back to this.

The fact that neither of them talked about this. But they were. Right now, they were talking about it. For the first time ever. And it was so painful Kyungsoo barely ever could feel he had an existence outside of the ache for something he yearned so much, something he had been yearning for so long. He didn’t even remember a Kyungsoo that wasn’t yearning for Baekhyun. It felt like that version of himself had never existed.

He’d always felt like Baekhyun had been created for him to love but maybe Kyungsoo had been the one created to yearn for Baekhyun’s love.

And it was funny, the way that in this too, they were similar. Blaming each other about the same thing. Doing the same thing. Living the same thing. Maybe, just maybe, wanting the same thing without the other believing so. They’d always been so similar, so different yet fitting, so complementary.

Baekhyun closed his eyes for a moment, took another step back. Kyungsoo should step closer, compensate, do something. That was what Baekhyun had asked of him. To do something. Something he wanted.

And Kyungsoo wanted. He wanted so much.

"I just lost you one more time, didn’t I?" Baekhyun muttered, lips shivering with a blown out laugh at the end of his sentence. "You don’t want this."

Then, he turned around and Kyungsoo watched him stride back to his car.

They kept losing each other.

And it was unfair. So unfair. Because Baekhyun hadn’t lost him. He’d just told Kyungsoo that he _wanted_ him. That was what Kyungsoo wished from Baekhyun. It wasn’t what he only wished anymore. It was what he’d understood.

In his haste, Baekhyun hit his hand against a surrounding car. The sound pulsated in Kyungsoo’s chest, squeezing his insides and propelling him forward.

He didn’t want this. This wasn’t what he wanted. He knew what he wanted and it wasn’t losing Baekhyun one more time or letting Baekhyun think that he had lost him.

Kyungsoo blinked once, twice, thrice, and he pushed against the car door to shut it again before Baekhyun could fully open it. Their eyes met, rendering Kyungsoo even more breathless than he already was. Those eyes. That was the only place he wanted Baekhyun to lose him in.

Kyungsoo pressed his lips together, crushing his courage, gaze jumping in-between Baekhyun’s eyes, unable to leave anywhere else. He didn’t want anywhere else. He wanted Baekhyun to know that. When he parted his lips, his courage had been crushed only to grow tenfold.

"Stop losing me."

Baekhyun turned him into both the most cowardly and the bravest version of himself.

"Stop losing me," he repeated. That was what he wanted. "Just let me—" He took a deep breath in, hand seeking Baekhyun’s. The tip of his fingers touched the back of Baekhyun’s hand. Baekhyun’s eyes were wide, alert, so mesmerizing, yet still slanted into regret. Fear.

Baekhyun had never said those things to him. Kyungsoo had never said those things to him either. These words were always left unsaid. Unsaid but there. Always there. Right now, they were out in the open. And Kyungsoo was terrified of it, of how strong this was.

Baekhyun took his hand properly into his before Kyungsoo could. Breathing out, Kyungsoosqueezed their fingers together.

"Just let me get lost in you," he said, voice rattled by a plea, by a need. He felt the tremors of his own voice on Baekhyun’s fingers. Reverberated. The same way everything about Baekhyun was reverberated in him. "Let us get lost in each other. Let’s stop losing each other over and over again. Why don’t we talk about it?" Kyungsoo’s voice fell into a whisper, Baekhyun’s breath caressed the despair he could feel widening his own features. "About how good it is to get lost in each other?"

Baekhyun breathed out longly through his nose. He wasn’t smiling. Baekhyun always kept his smile on, that was one of the things Kyungsoo loved the most about him. One of the many things. But here and now, Baekhyun had never been so serious. They’d never been so serious about themselves, about what they had.

"Is that what you want?" Baekhyun asked and it was almost laughable. The way Baekhyun was so unsure about Kyungsoo truly wanting the one thing he obsessed the most over. "What do you want, Kyungsoo?"

"I want you," Kyungsoo told Baekhyun for the first time ever, voice steady and confident. He’d never been so sure about something in his life. "I want you not only during the night. I don’t want you only in your house or mine. I don’t want you only in bed or whenever your clothes are off. I want the whole of you. Always. Everywhere." Kyungsoo gulped, glanced down just to see Baekhyun clinging into his hand with a strength he’d never felt before, a strength he’d maybe never allowed himself to show. He looked back up into his eyes. "What do you want?"

"I want to think it’s fate between us and not feel stupid or hopeless," Baekhyun confessed, the whisper of his voice molten with honesty. "I want you to admit you think the same." He stopped for a second there, and then smiled, small, eyebrows slanted. "As much as I like offending you and driving you crazy with nonsense and mock fighting you just to make you laugh in exasperation, I also want to talk to you about how much I like you. So bad. I want that so bad, Kyungsoo."

And just with those few words alone, Kyungsoo became the happiest version of himself. A version that was nothing but softness in the eyes, jolts of joy in the veins, and completion expending in the chest.

"I want to kiss you," he said, voice loud and clear. Not a whisper like Baekhyun anymore. This was him and only him admitting what he wanted the most at the moment. "To let you know how much I like you too."

Baekhyun smiled, waited, and Kyungsoo only closed his eyes when he could lose his lips to Baekhyun’s. It was different to kiss Baekhyun while knowing that he liked him, that he liked Kyungsoo back. It was the same lips, the same happiness puffed into the cloudy lower lip he kissed, the same perfect slant of Baekhyun’s upper lip he brushed his mouth against, the same pucker always there to meet his kisses with delicacy.

But it was different. Because from now on, they would only lose and find themselves back on each other’s lips.


End file.
